West Papua Report

August 2012

This is the 100th in a series of monthly
reports that focus on developments affecting Papuans. This
series is produced by the non-profit West Papua Advocacy
Team (WPAT) drawing on media accounts, other NGO
assessments, and analysis and reporting from sources within
West Papua. This report is co-published with the East Timor
and Indonesia Action Network (ETAN). Back issues are
posted online at
http://www.etan.org/issues/wpapua/default.htm Questions
regarding this report can be addressed to Edmund McWilliams
at edmcw@msn.com. If you
wish to receive the report directly via e-mail, send a note to
etan@etan.org.

SUMMARY

Indonesian
security forces have detained Papuans attempting to raise
funds for medical care for Papuan political prisoners.
Indonesia has long fallen short of its international
obligations to provide medical care for prisoners.
Meanwhile, private efforts to raise funds for medical care
for Papuan political prisoner Filep Karma are progressing
well. Australian researchers have noted evidence of
expanding operations by Indonesia's notorious Detachment 88
which is heavily funded by the U.S. and Australian
governments. An observer is raising questions about the
impact of international solidarity movements aimed at
helping Papuans, contending that the involvement of
western-based organizations in the solidarity movement may
instigate Jakarta's security approach in West Papua. WPAT
invites comment on this argument. A number of international
groups named in a list of OPM supporters have issued a
statement rejecting the Indonesian charges, challenging the
government's strategy of seeking "to blame others for
problems created by the Indonesian government's and security
forces' own policies and actions." An Indonesian lawmaker
has charged Freeport with "arrogance" as negotiations
between the U.S. mining giant and the Indonesian government
fail. WPAT notes the larger tragedy that Papuans have never
played a significant role in such negotiations over the
exploitation of Papuan natural resources. The Asian Human
Rights Commission has published an excellent article on the
Merauke Integrated Food and Energy Estate (MIFEE).

A July 24
Radio New Zealand (RNZ) report details the detention of
15 members of the "Solidarity for Victims of Human Rights
Abuse in Indonesia's Papua" (SKPHP). The members were
arrested while collecting public donations to cover the
costs of medical treatment for Papuan political prisoners
and others detained in Abepura prison.

The large banner says
"The government doesn't want to pay for medical
treatment for Filep Karma and Ferdinand Pakage."
The handwritten posters say "The Papuan
political prisoners are not criminals." Photo
JUBI/TIMO

The police contended that they had arrested the activists
because the organization was not formally recognized. The 15
were subsequently released. A spokesman for the group,
Peneas Lokbere, told RNZ that the group plans to continue to
collect money.

SKPHP supports political prisoners, including raising
funds for the purchase of their medicines.

The Indonesian government
regularly fails to provide the level of medical care for
prisoners set forth in international covenants such as the
UN Body of Principles for the Protection of All Persons
under Any Form of Detention or Imprisonment (Principle 24).
Indonesian law (Regulation No. 32/1999 on Terms and
Procedures on the Implementation of Prisoners' Rights in
Prisons) also requires all medical costs for treatment of a
prisoner at a hospital be borne by the State.

Minimal standards regarding treatment of prisoners also were
established by the "United Nations Congress on The
Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders" held in
Geneva in 1955 and approved by the Economic and Social
Council by its resolutions 663 C (XXIV) of 31 July 1957 and
2076 (LXII) of 13 May 1977. Regarding medical treatment of
prisoners, that resolution in article 22 states: (2) Sick
prisoners who require specialist treatment shall be
transferred to specialized institutions or to civil
hospitals. Where hospital facilities are provided in an
institution, their equipment, furnishings and pharmaceutical
supplies shall be proper for the medical care and treatment
of sick prisoners, and there shall be a staff of suitable
trained officers.

Friends of Papuan political prisoner Filep Karma, under
the coordination of his eldest daughter Audryne Karma, have
raised more than 110 million rupiah to enable her father to
obtain medical treatment in a Jakarta hospital. Indonesia's
Ministry of Law and Human Rights office in Jayapura has yet
to organize his Jayapura-Jakarta trip. "I'm glad that we
could raise the funding pretty quickly. It should be enough
to bring my father to Jakarta and to have the colonoscopy,"
Audryne said.

In March 2012, Filep Karma was hospitalized at the Jayapura
public hospital because of excessive bleeding with his bowel
movement. Tests showed that he either has a tumor or
intestinal inflammation. On March 27, the hospital
recommended Karma have a colonoscopy at Jakarta's PGI Cikini
hospital, because the Jayapura hospital does not have the
right equipment.

Abepura prison officials have told the Karma family that the
prison cannot finance the treatment because it lacks
resources for this purpose in its budget. Prison authorities
earlier told the Karma family that it needed to finance his
travel as well as cover the costs for two prison guards to
accompany him to Jakarta. In addition, Filep Karma explained
in
his Facebook account: "We also want to have a family
member and a Papuan activist to accompany me in Jakarta. The
airfare is also quite expensive.

The campaign, which got under way in May 2012 has garnered
significant support. Rev. Socratez Yoman of the Alliance of
Baptist Churches in Papua organized his church to collect
money. Students at the Walter Post College in Sentani,
Jayapura, also collected money. Labor unions and many
individuals directly donated. The London-based
Prisoners of Conscience Appeal Fund gave a grant to
support Karma's care.

In July 2012, an NGO coalition called the Solidarity of
Papuan Human Rights Abuse Victims (Solidaritas Korban
Pelanggaran Ham Papua, SKPHP) ran a street campaign to raise
funds for Karma and other political prisoners. But
Indonesian police forcibly dispersed the street donation
campaign (see above).

To help with Filep Karma's medical treatment, you can
transfer funds to his accounts:

Bank Central Asia in Jayapura
Account Number 814 013 6108
In the name of Filep Jacob Karma

Bank Mandiri in Jayapura
Account Number 154 000 593 9834
In the name of Filep Jacob Karma

Questions are being asked about the role that the
partly Australian funded and trained elite Indonesian
police squad, Densus (Detachment) 88, has played during
the recent violence in West Papua. Set up in the wake of
the Bali terrorist bombings, Densus 88's mandate was to
tackle the rise of domestic terrorism in Indonesia. [WPAT
note: The U.S. government has
also played a key
role in the foundation and funding of Denus 88, also
known as Detachment 88.]

While acclaimed for capturing or killing known and
suspected terrorists, Densus 88 also gained a reputation
for extreme violence: many suspects being killed rather
than arrested. Now reports are suggesting that Densus 88
is operating in West Papua, possibly clandestinely, and
has been responsible for the assassination-like killing
of Papuan political activist, Mako Tabuni, on June 14.

While Indonesian National Police spokesman, Saud Usman
Nasution, has denied Densus 88 is operating in West
Papua he has left the door open for their involvement,
saying in the Jakarta Globe on June 27, "Densus will be
deployed if terrorism occurred there." However other
reports, for instance from Kontras Papua, a local human
rights organization, state that Densus 88 is already
operating in West Papua "carrying out undercover
activities" (Cenderwasih Pos, June 23). Kontras Papua
believes that Densus 88 was involved in the Tabuni
killing - where the victim is reported to have been
standing in the street eating betel nut when three
unmarked cars pulled up nearby. With no provocation a
person emerged from one car and shot the victim dead.
[See the July 2012 West
Papua Report for additional details of this
assassination.]

Other reports of Densus 88 activities in West Papua have
come from respected Papuan leaders. Reliable sources
observed Densus 88 police arrest KNPB member, Zakeus
Hupla, in the lobby of the Dhanny Hotel, Entrop,
Jayapura, on the morning of June 23. Other reports
indicate further arrests of KNPB members by Densus 88
and their subsequent torture. According to family
members, no arrest warrants were issued by Indonesian
police for these arrests, and the Jayapura police deny
that the KNPB members are in their custody. Indeed it is
unclear if these men have been arrested, abducted or
'disappeared.'

These events are of genuine interest and concern to
Australia because Australian taxpayers' money is spent
training and maintaining Densus 88. This organization
has a legitimate role to play in countering the rise of
terrorism, but it should act strictly within its
organizational mandate. If Australian taxpayers are
indeed partially funding a clandestine force involved in
killings, abduction and torture of Papuan activists an
unacceptable situation has developed. These events and
allegations must be comprehensively investigated and all
funding for Densus 88 frozen until either the
allegations have been disproved or the individual police
officers guilty of crimes arrested and tried in an open
court. We call on the Australian government to
immediately halt the funding of Densus 88, to
investigate the claims of its misconduct, and to
apologise to the Papuan people if they are proven to be
true.

A recent article by Martin Pelcher in the online
publication
"people-land-truth" focused attention on the growing
violence in West Papua, particularly during the months of
May and June, when Indonesian security forces increased
their assaults on Papuan citizens, purportedly to counter
growing violence by "unknown" elements. Pelcher notes that
there is broad suspicion, particularly among Indonesian
observers, that the "unknown" elements are in fact the
security forces themselves seeking to create pretexts for
their expanding operations in West Papua.

Pelcher concludes his report "Fear, Grief and Hope in
Occupied West Papua," with a provocative analysis of the
impact of growing international attention to the plight of
Papuans. That portion of Pelcher's analysis follows:

Given the complexity and volatility of the political
situation, it is not clear what helpful role solidarity
advocates can play. The Indonesian state and media do not
hesitate to attribute signs of Papuan 'separatist' agitation
to the shadowy forces of a 'foreign conspiracy' seen as
responsible for East Timor's independence.

It is worth understanding Indonesian nationalist anxieties
in their historical and geopolitical context: the Indonesian
nation was founded when the then revolutionary national army
expelled Dutch colonialists from most of the archipelago
after WWII; 15 years later, the military launched operations
to chase the Dutch out of Western New Guinea as well (the
Dutch finally retreated under US and UN pressure). At the
time, the standard Indonesian nationalist narrative framed
the incorporation of Papua as a question of opposing
imperialism, and the West Papuan movement as colonial
puppets. More recently, Western support for East Timorese
independence -- and signs of such support being extended to
West Papua -- have been easy to frame as vehicles for the
West's neo-imperial manipulation and pursuit of the region's
abundant mineral and petroleum resources.

The more Western advocates succeed in focusing global
attention on the plight of Papuans under Indonesian rule,
the more the Indonesian security establishment can deploy
the specter of a 'foreign intervention' (like the UN's
intervention in East Timor) to mobilize Indonesian public
opinion behind its harsh policing measures. The current
moment poses a stark challenge to action oriented observers:
how to generate global solidarity against injustice in West
Papua without strengthening the state's pretext for terror?

Part of the answer may lie in the spaces for exchange that
are being generated through networks like Intercontinental
Cry: spaces where actors engaged in different worldwide
struggles for justice can share perspectives (ideally)
unmediated by giant corporations, intergovernmental
institutions, INGO culture, or unreflexive settler-colonial
privilege.

To put in plainly: the international West Papua solidarity
movement is in need of platforms for exchange that do not
center the voices and perspectives of white people. Subject
to numerous waves of colonization, displacement and
militarization, West Papuans have political affinities with
colonized, displaced, racially-deprived, and otherwise
subjugated peoples at a global level.

But the dynamics of history and geopolitics have produced a
situation where mainly white NGO workers and human rights
activists have largely monopolized international access to
the scene of West Papuan resistance politics. Collaborations
with leftists and rights activists in Indonesian cities have
been key to the Papuan movement, as they were for East
Timor; so have expressions of support by African-American
and Pacific US legislators.

Still, global Papua solidarity advocates have prioritized
high-level lobbying towards Western powers, at the expense
of possibilities for 'South-South/ intra-'Fourth World'
networking. For Indonesia's deep security state to lose its
'anti-imperialist' pretext for repression, solidarity
linkages need to bypass neo-colonial adventurist-activist
gatekeepers (including this author) -- agents of what Teju
Cole (referring to the 'Stop Kony' debacle) has called the
White Saviour Industrial Complex.'

In the 1950s, when Dutch planners were forced to abandon
their colonial project in Indonesia, they refocused their
fantasies of 'ethical' imperialism on the supposedly 'blank
slate' of Western New Guinea. These colonial agents framed
Papuans as 'primitives' requiring 'development' before they
could be allowed to govern themselves. The legacy of this
history lives on in the Indonesian state's colonization
project, fed by media depictions of Papuans' supposedly
'backwards' life ways.

Throughout this history, Papuans have consistently been
imagined as objects to be governed by others, rather than as
political actors struggling for dignity. Transnational human
rights advocacy has succeeded in getting the story of Papuan
suffering out there on the global stage; but the spectre of
Western intervention is also justifying and motivating the
terror it seeks to stop.

Prevailing models of international advocacy may not be
working for West Papua; they are easy for the security state
to manipulate towards its own ends - which happen to suit
other powerful global actors as well. Western-centric human
rights champions need to consider making way for alternative
paradigms of direct solidarity among colonized and displaced
peoples.

(WPAT Comment: WPAT welcomes comment on the above
analysis, particularly regarding approaches to increasing
the effectiveness of international solidarity with the
Papuan people. WPAT will publish responses in future "West
Papua Report" editions, as space allows.)

[A number of international groups named in a list of OPM
supporters have issued a statement rejecting the Indonesian
charges, challenging the government's strategy of seeking
"to blame others for problems created by the Indonesian
government's and security forces' own policies and
actions."]

We do not know who created the list or when. It is full of
typos and other errors, including groups that no long exist
and may never have existed. The list includes the original
name of one of us; ETAN
changed its name in 2005.

The implication of the list is that expressing
concern about West Papua is interfering in
matters internal to Indonesia. We strongly
reject that.

Lists like these (see here for another example:
http://sydney.edu.au/arts/peace_conflict/docs/Anatomy_for_print.pdf)
seek to blame others for problems created by the Indonesian
government's and security forces' own policies and actions.
We saw this in East Timor, where instead of acknowledging
the depth of the local opposition to its occupation,
Indonesian officials insisted resistance came from a handful
of East Timorese, emboldened by international supporters.
Indonesia must stop blaming outsiders and seeing enemies
everywhere. It must take responsibility for its failures in
West Papua. It is these failures which our organizations
seek to address.

The implication of the list is that expressing concern about
West Papua is interfering in matters internal to Indonesia.
We strongly reject that.

First, much of our advocacy is in response to pleas for help
from within West Papua.

Second, we are urging that Indonesia adhere to its
international responsibilities by following the UN Charter
and human rights international conventions and treaties,
many of which Indonesia has signed or ratified.

Moreover, much of our advocacy is focused on our own
countries, addressing the roles of our own governments and
the international institutions to which they belong, as well
as the impact of multinational corporations active in the
territory. We work to change our own governments' policies
so they support human rights and justice. We seek to limit
our governments' support for Indonesia's security forces
which regularly violate the rights of West Papuans. By doing
so, our governments can contribute to a lessening of
violence and peaceful solutions to West Papua's problems.

The breakdown in negotiations between the Indonesian
Government and the U.S. copper and gold mining giant
Freeport-McMoran prompted an Indonesian legislator to charge
the U.S. firm with "arrogance."

Dewi Aryani of the Commission VII of the House of
Representatives said Freeport had no intention of
renegotiating its contract. "The country's dignity has been
trampled on and nothing could be done facing Freeport," the
legislator from the opposition PDIP told
Antara on July 28.

Dewi said the government wants change in six areas: the
"concession area; extension of contract; royalty; regulation
requiring processing and refining of mineral ores in the
country; share divestment; and the requirement to use
domestic mining goods and services." Freeport only offered
to increase the gold royalty from 1 percent to 3.75 percent
of selling price. The royalty is less important compared
with other points, she said.

WPAT Comment: The failure of negotiations between the
Indonesian government and Freeport obscures a more
fundamental problem related to the 45 year Freeport
operations in West Papua. The current negotiations, like all
previous Jakarta-Freeport discussions, ignore the reality
that the vast resources being exploited are situated in West
Papua. Despite this reality, Papuans have never played a
significant role in the negotiations which govern the
exploitation of those resources. Moreover, Freeport has
repeatedly relied on the force of Indonesian security
services to address persistent protest by Papuans over the
extraordinary burden imposed on them by Freeport's mining
practices.

An article by Selwyn Moran, published by the Asian Human
Rights Commission, reviews and updates the Merauke
Integrated Food and Energy Estate (MIFEE) project. This is
Jakarta's plan to convert a vast area of West Papua into a
corporate controlled food and energy production zone.

The
transformation of such a great expanse of forest
into farmland cannot be done overnight, nor can
forest people casually leave behind their identity
and livelihood to enter this brave new world.

Moran describes "a slow and stealthy conflict, the
transformation of such a great expanse of forest into
farmland cannot be done overnight, nor can forest people
casually leave behind their identity and livelihood to enter
this brave new world. The Malind have a long struggle ahead
of them, whether they aim to reject the developments
entirely or find some way to adjust to life in very
different surroundings."

The Indonesian government's failure to take into account
tribal rights and the dishonest dealings by the corporations
with local peoples is a saga that is strongly reminiscent of
the exploitation of peoples seen in the colonial era.